How the “Settler” and “Native” Divide Manifests in NYC’s Economy
From the smoldering ash-heaps of neoliberal New York, we witness Mamdani’s central thesis come to life: the creation of a bifurcated citizenry. The city functions as a colonial state where the “settler” class–the financier, the tech baron, the real estate speculator–enjoys the full force of legal and economic protection. They are the citizens in Mamdani’s frame. Meanwhile, the service worker, the delivery rider, the domestic caretaker–disproportionately women of color–are the “natives,” governed by a different set of rules: punitive labor laws, stagnant wages, and the constant threat of displacement. My Marxist analysis sees this not as an accident but as the logical outcome of racial capitalism, which requires a permanently precarious labor pool to fuel its accumulation. My feminist lens sees how this burden falls heaviest on women, who are expected to reproduce the labor force for free while being exploited within it. The solution is not a plea for inclusion into this corrupt structure, but a radical dismantling of the bifurcated system itself. We must forge a political identity not based on the consumerist individualism of the settler, but on the collective, class-conscious solidarity of the oppressed. This requires moving beyond the NGO-ized, savior-complex of poverty management and towards a mass movement for economic redistribution and workers’ control over the means of production.
